Regional Director’s Opening Address at the 8th Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Parliamentarian Forum for Global Health, Port Villa, Vanuatu

- Hon. Seoule Davidson, Speaker of the Parliament of Vanuatu and Chair of the Meeting

- Hon. Jiho Cha, Respected Delegate from the National Assembly, Republic of Korea;

- Your excellency, Mr, John Tarigquetu, Minister of Health Vanuatu;

- My colleague and friend, Dr. Saia, Regional Director WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific

- Distinguished Parliamentarians and Member State representatives

- Experts, Partners, Colleagues and friends

Good morning, and welcome to this Eighth Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Parliamentarian Forum on Global Health.

Over the next three days you will share your knowledge and learning and will deliberate on how best to shape a competent health workforce to respond to evolving population health needs.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

COVID-19 showed the world the importance of health workers to health, well-being and economic prosperity.

While the pandemic brought renewed global interest in strengthening the health workforce, in the WHO South-East Asia Region, we began prioritizing strengthening human resources for health a decade ago in 2014.

There is much that we can rightfully be proud of in our region.

Since 2014, we have increased the density of doctors, nurses and midwives in South-East Asia.

Almost all our countries have met and surpassed the original WHO threshold of 22.8 doctors, nurses and midwives per 10 000 people.

Crucially, throughout this period, we have witnessed a revolution in access to health professional education.

Since 2014, India has established 294 new medical schools, doubling undergraduate medical seats, with an improved geographic distribution and public-private mix. Prime Minister Modi, in his Independence Day address last month, announced that an additional 75,000 additional MBBS seats will be created in India over the next five years - achieving an annual seat capacity of over 175,000.

Similarly, since 2000, Indonesia and Thailand have respectively doubled and tripled the production of medical doctors and nurses. Indonesia's Health Omnibus Law, signed by the President in 2023, has further set the scene to significantly improve the size, optimization, and distribution of the health workforce.

Though smaller in scale, improvements in health workforce production in countries like Bhutan, Maldives and Timor-Leste are a critical step towards self-sufficiency:

- The Khesar Gyalpo University of Medical Sciences of Bhutan launched its first batch of MBBS students in 2023

- The first batch of graduates from the School of Medicine at the Maldives National University graduated in 2024, and

- Just this year, Timor-Leste has started to transition from Cuban to Timorese medical faculty at their National University

As the number of training institutions, and the production of health workforce increases across our region, quality, as well as alignment with national health goals, must be our focus.

The regulation of health practitioners - and the associated role of parliamentarians - is increasingly recognized as being linked to a range of national health priorities. These include the distribution of educational institutions, education cost and quality, distribution and composition of health workforce teams, informing health workforce planning and mobilization, enabling use of digital technologies, and managing international migration.

Importantly, across several of our countries, recent and historic reforms to health practitioner regulatory system have been undertaken to assures quality, and to better align to national health priorities.

Some examples of these include:

- the 2022 Bhutan Civil Service Reform Act

- Bangladesh's 2022 Non-governmental Medical and Dental College Act

- India's 2019 National Medical Commission Act, and 2021 National Commission for Allied and Health Care Professions Act

- Indonesia's 2023 Health Omnibus Law, and

- Nepal's 2019 National Medical Education Act

These and other initiatives - with appropriate implementation and parliamentary oversight - hold great promise to increase the number of health workers available, and also enable them to competently and empathetically address evolving population health needs.

The issue is complex, the time is short, and your role as parliamentarians is central.

I am certain that over the course of the Forum's three-days, you will successfully share experience and advance collaboration towards:

• Strengthening HRH stewardship in the health system
• Steering the private sector for public good
  

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Our two WHO Regions of South-East Asia and the Western-Pacific have a long history of cooperation in supporting health system development, based on the context, values, priorities and innovations present in Asia-Pacific.

I would like to close not by asking, but by urging: Let us continue to strengthen our collaboration and our solidarity.

Through sharing experiences, supporting translation, and building cross-country partnerships, we can strengthen the health workforce and resilient health systems across the Asia-Pacific.

With fast increasing health workforce numbers, never has the promise of "Health for all" been closer at hand.

I wish you productive, engaging and successful deliberations over the next three days.

Thank you.

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